If you’ve been wondering why so many news organisations have been printing negative stories about Google, you may have come up with a few theories of your own. Fear of Google’s near monopoly on online news aggregating, genuine concerns over privacy, or just sour grapes from bitter journalists.
But you probably wouldn’t have guessed that it’s all been a smear campaign orchestrated by Facebook.
The Social Media company approached the notorious PR firm Burson-Marsteller (formally handling PR for the Argentinian military junta and an Eastern European dictator) to release a few negative stories about the world’s leading search engine. And they’ve been caught red handed.
Following a number of leaked emails, Facebook admitted to asking the PR firm to publish a number of stories painting Google in a bad light in outlets such as the Washington Post. Although they’ve denied that they were orchestrating a smear campaign.
A spokesman claimed that Facebook just wanted people to complain about Google collecting information from Facebook user accounts – but didn’t explain why this couldn’t have been done by asking Facebook’s 600 million users on-site as opposed to in the press.
Regardless of how much Facebook want to replace Google, they might face a tough battle in UK workplaces. Because while nearly every office relies on at least one Google service, 48% of employees aren’t allowed to use Twitter or Facebook. Which is a shame, as it’ll stop them following FirstFound on Twitter or looking at the FirstFound Facebook Fan Page.
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